Towards Supporting Users in Semantic Exploration of Large Distributed Schemas

Emergency management increasingly depends on various information systems to support crisis operations and facilitate communication and coordination. In this paper, we address the issues that may arise in large schemas that are developed collaboratively by diverse community of users for data sharing. We share our experience with the U.S. National Information Exchange Model and the free web-based tools available for searching its schemas. Based on what we learned, we propose techniques for enhancing the tools designed for search and exploration of such complex schemas.